*The following narrative is from one of our HIV-positive scholarship applicants. It has been minimally changed to remove any identifying information.*
I had just turned 18. It was summertime and my dad was out of town. It was the perfect time for me to let out all my sexual frustrations that I had kept to myself for so long-- It was a time of liberation, of freedom, of accepting myself as a gay young man. It was a beautiful summer simmering with the vigor of youth and recklessness, and that’s how I remember it. That’s how I’ve always remembered it.
It wasn’t much later-- in early August,